In tiny Icamole, an almost deserted village in Mexico's desert north, the librarian, Lucio, is also the village's only reader. Though it has not rained for a year in Icamole, when Lucio's son Remigio draws the body of a thirteen-year-old girl from his well, floodgates open on dark possibility. Strangely enamored of the dead girl's beauty and fearing implication, Remigio turns desperately to his father. Persuading his son to bury the body, Lucio baptizes the girl Babette, after the heroine of a favorite novel. Is Lucio the keeper of too many stories? As police begin to investigate, has he lost his footing? Or do revelation and resolution lie with other characters and plots from his library? Toscana displays brilliant mastery of the novel--in all its elements--as Lucio keeps every last reader guessing.

FROM THE BOOK

[S]ince July the people have been coming together every afternoon at the Archangel Gabriel chapel to pray. But September is here and not a drop of anything, even spit, from the sky. Now and then there will be dew on the leaves and windowpanes at daybreak, but hardly long enough for even the early risers to notice, since the sun dries up all the moisture in Icamole as soon as it appears over the village.

Rain clouds approached once from the east, and the people clambered up the nearest hills to urge them on. Here we are, come on, we're thirsty, and some women opened umbrellas to make a show of their unshakable faith, a faith insufficient for moving mountains, not Friar's Hill, in any case, twenty kilometers away, while all looked on in disappointment at the way the clouds bumped against its peaks and slopes and emptied their precious load right there. Neither the first nor the last time that Friar's Hill had robbed them of hope, which is why neighboring Villa de Garcia remained green while in Icamole the ditches are raceways for opossums. Remigio pulls on the rope and lets the bucket down again. It makes the same sound: a thump. He would have found harp music or a siren song coming up from below just as disagreeable; the only voice of his well had to be a splash.

Mexican novelist David Toscana describes his narrative aesthetics as "realismo desquiciado" (unrestrained realism), breaking with the Latin trend of magic realism through a prose that keeps an eye on the concrete experience of life in all its absurdity and lavish strangeness. In its original Spanish El ultimo lector was awarded the National Colima Prize, the Premio Jose Fuentes Mares, and the Antonin Artaud Prize and was also shortlisted for Latin America's most important literary award, the Romulo Gallegos International Novel Prize.

Asa Zatz has translated more than seventy-five Spanish-language books, including works of Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Original editions and rights sold 2004-present
El ultimo lector, Mexico City: Random House, 2004